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The influence of religion upon the benevolent instincts of man can be studied in nearly all its phases in the history of charities administered by the Christian church; and in that history can be traced the power of an accepted theology both to exalt and to degrade the charitable impulse. While the antiquarian may be able to point out many traces of active benevolence before the Christian era, while there is much genuine philanthropy outside of Christianity, and while it may even be said that the church of the present day that administers its charities most wisely is not Christian at all, but Jewish, -- it yet remains true that charity, as we know it, gets its chief religious sanction and incentive from Him who gave as the summary of all the law and prophets the coordinate commands to love God and to love our neighbor, and who, in explaining these commands, pronounced the parable of the Good Samaritan. At first, Christianity brought to the world a purified and ennobled charity, a love of fellow-men very different from the semi-selfish motives that prompted to prayer, penance, and almsgiving as means to a common end -- that of securing divine favor. The diaconate of the early church seems to have been a satisfactory way of organizing what is now called "friendly visiting."

But the voluntary and congregational charity of the early churches before Constantine was soon replaced by the mediaeval ecclesiastical methods of parishes, bishops, monasteries, orders, and institutions, and with the worldly success of the church came degeneration. (4) As the church became an institution administering progressively large revenues, its service of the poor degenerated, partly from worldliness, and partly from "other-worldliness." Overt worldliness, leading to the misapplication of revenues designed for the relief of the poor, sometimes attained great proportions and was a tendency that honest ecclesiastics found it necessary to fight continually. But such palpable evils wrought little harm, as compared with the dry rot of spiritual selfishness, which caused charity to degenerate into almsgiving for the benefit of the one who gave. The doctrine of Augustine that "alms have power to extinguish and expiate sin," though taught only with qualifications, became the motive power in the charities of the Middle Ages. Gifts to the church for charitable purposes became merely a method of securing a satisfactory balance on the books of the recording angel, a way of getting one's self or others out of purgatory.

As an agent for securing gifts both of property and of personal service the church was almost incredibly successful. If the devotion of material wealth to the relief of the poor could alone have cured destitution, it would have been cured. But we are all familiar with the disastrous results that followed so much indiscriminate giving. A rich church among a multitude of poor, which Emminghaus declares to have been always the ecclesiastical ideal, did not prove a satisfactory arrangement. When Hubert-Valleroux, in discussing the rural charities of France, shows that all the great charitable institutions of that country originally owed their existence to the influence of Christianity through the church, he is historically correct. But when he makes this statement of fact the basis of a plea for the non-intervention of the state in the present administration of charitable institutions, he is wrong; for the history of charitable institutions shows that, while they originated through the influence of the church, it was also through ecclesiastical influence that they degenerated and became mischievous.

The state interfered for many reasons, some of them certainly unworthy; but one sufficient cause was everywhere present -- ecclesiastical mismanagement, and the necessity the community was under to protect itself from the spreading disease of pauperism. "In no case," says Lecky, "was the abolition of monasteries effected in a more indefensible manner than in England, but the transfer of property, that was once employed in a great measure in charity, to the courtiers of King Henry was ultimately a benefit to the English, poor; for no misapplication of this property by private persons could produce as much evil as an unrestrained monasticism." (5)

In almost every European country, the state first tried to stop beggary and vagabondage by repressive measures, and only when these failed was obliged to assail the evil at one of its sources by taking charge of relief work. This work was taken in hand by the state in Scandinavia at a very early period, in England at the time of the Reformation, in France at the time of the Revolution, and in Italy within the last few years. In Germany, Luther suggested that the church and state should work together to root out beggary, and to lessen as much as possible the misery caused by destitution and disease. The religious wars that followed the Reformation in that country interfered with the immediate transfer of relief work to the state. "The Protestant authorities," says Emminghaus, "were not more prudent than their predecessors where valuable property of the church for the benefit of the poor remained; and wherever the care of the poor was still in ecclesiastical hands, the only alteration in the way in which it was conducted arose from the fact that the church had less abundant means at its disposal. But," he adds, "this fact alone may be considered a great gain, for abundance of means is the greatest danger of all in the relief of the poor." (6)